


a late night conversation beneath a tree

by bluflamingo



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Background Relationships, Coming Out Conversations, Gen, post 407 Whiskey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 02:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17153471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: After Bitty catches him, Whiskey runs (literally) into Nursey.





	a late night conversation beneath a tree

Connor runs straight towards the sophomore dorms, which is a dumb plan if Bitty decides to follow him. It's not like there's really anywhere else he can go, though, and Tango's got a date, so he can at least have their room to himself for a minute.

He ducks off the main path, down toward the river. One minute he's running, the next, he's slammed right into someone, knocking them sprawling in the grass.

Only his grandma's voice, telling him how well-brought up young men behave, brings him to a halt, and he's reaching down a hand before he thinks about it. "Sorry, you okay?"

"My fault," a familiar voice says as a cool hand closes around Connor's. "I probably wasn't looking where I was going."

Connor helps Nursey haul himself to his feet, then picks up a couple of his notebooks for good measure. "Thanks," Nursey says, then, "Oh, hey, Whiskey, I didn't realise it was you. Or see you coming, I did not realise you were that fast off the ice," and then, "Hey, you okay? You look kind of –" His hand catches Connor's arm the same place Bitty did, but gently enough that Connor doesn't immediately want to shake it off. In the gloom away from the pathway lighting, and with Nursey wearing his trademark beanie, Connor can't really see his face, just hear the concern in his voice when he says, "Whiskey? You okay?"

"Yeah, I – sorry I ran you over."

"It's chill." Nursey tugs, still gentle, and Connor follows him to a nearby bench looking over the water. Nursey's hand on his arm keeps Connor close enough that he can smell a faint hint of smoke clinging to Nursey. "My poetry professor assigned us to write something about nature, I was trying to get a feel for it, but I'm a city boy. Nature's too – quiet."

"I kind of like it." Connor hesitates, then offers, "Where I grew up, there weren't a lot of other houses."

Nursey makes a face. "I would not have done well growing up somewhere like that." 

Connor doesn't have anything to say to that, and apparently Nursey doesn't have anything to add, so they just sit there quietly. If he concentrates, Connor can hear the beat of the music at the party, and closer, the breeze in the trees. He wonders, idly, if that would make a good start to a poem – the contrast between the natural and the unnatural.

Which is uncomfortably close to what he was trying not to think about, tucked in a corner with Chad kissing him. 

"Were you at the party?" Nursey asks, like he read Connor's mind. "Man, Shitty literally blockaded me and Dex and Chowder in the Haus our frog year, to make sure we didn't go. You're a braver man than we were."

"I went with a friend. Bitty caught me there, I guess he was looking for the waffles." He snaps his mouth shut too late, not sure why he said that – he's not Tango, doesn't blurt out every thought that crosses his mind. Maybe he can blame it on adrenaline, or the non-existent contact high from Nursey.

Who winces. "That's why you were running? You remember he's our captain right, you can't run forever."

"Yeah." A whole new bolt of adrenaline goes through Connor, making his hands sweat. He's told like three people ever, and he's much closer to all of them than he is to Nursey, who's cool, but spends most of his time with Dex and Chowder, so Connor doesn't know him all that well. "He, um – I was with someone. The friend I went with. He was – we were kissing."

"Oh, shit," Nursey breathes. For one crazy moment, Connor thinks he's going to disapprove. "You're not out, right, shit."

"You can't be out and make it in the NHL," Connor says, which is ridiculous, because Jack Zimmerman just kissed a guy on center ice, but he's _Jack Zimmerman_ , son of Bad Bob, the hockey star everyone was just waiting to see when he graduated. 

"Yeah," Nursey says, really soft. When Connor looks at him, he smiles wryly. "Trust me, I'm a queer, mixed race poetry nerd with anxiety, I get it."

"You're not hoping to get into the NHL." Connor just about manages to twist his tone into a question, instead of the bitter statement it starts as – Nursey's being nice, it's not his fault that Connor just outed himself to his hockey captain, the guy who's all over the media for being the boyfriend of the first out hockey player. 

"No," Nursey says, and he sounds really sad, "Not any more."

There's got to be history behind that, but Connor doesn't really want to talk about himself, so it's not fair to ask Nursey to. 

"What did Bitty say?" Nursey asks. Connor shakes his head and Nursey winces a bit. "You were literally running away from Bitty."

"He's gonna –" Connor takes a deep breath, but all his anxious energy has to come out eventually, and apparently it's going to happen right now. "He keeps – he's always trying to be my friend, and he won't understand why I didn't want to tell anyone, he won't get that it's not –" He breaks off, absurdly close to tears.

Nursey hand is back on the bare skin of his wrist where the sleeve of his hoodie's ridden up. "Bitty always wanted to be out," he says quietly, like Connor isn't sniffling and trying to catch his breath next to him. "So he doesn't really understand not wanting it. It's tough for him with his parents, I think, but here, and once he graduates, he's pretty much figured out a life where he's going to be fairly safe if he's out." Nursey huffs a laugh. "Which is good, since he came out on national television, and we all know that's not exactly been a smooth ride."

"I know," Connor says. He's read some of the comments, about Bitty and about Jack; some of them make him angry, and some are sweet, but some of them just make him shake, frightened for them as much as he's frightened for what it means for him.

"But it's a lot easier to make it as a Southern gay baker than it is to make it as a queer Latino hockey player, right? Especially when you're not signed yet."

Connor nods, tears spilling over, and Nursey gives him a hug. He curls into it, missing his family, missing the way he felt safe and anonymous at the party, missing the way he felt when he was a kid and didn't realise that he was different from the other boys, his cousins and brothers and friends. Nursey murmurs low in his ear, something that must be poetry from the rhythm, though Connor can't understand the words. It's comforting, like listening to his grandma's lullabies when he was tiny.

Connor breathes, letting the comfort and the poetry sink into him until he starts feeling too exposed, cuddling with another guy where anyone could walk by and see them.

"Better?" Nursey asks when Connor shifts back and wipes his eyes.

"Yeah." The whole thing with Bitty is still buzzing in the back of his brain, but it's a little easier, knowing that Nursey, at least, gets where that's coming from. He still wants to tell Tango, who doesn't make a lot of sense when he's giving advice, but is so concerned and well-intentioned about it that it makes Connor feel better anyway.

"You want me to walk you back to your dorm?" Nursey asks. "Or to the Haus, if you want to get it over with?" Connor shudders at the thought, which makes Nursey smile.

Maybe it's that, Nursey's soft, knowing smile, or the way the light catches on his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes, or just that Connor's still kind of in the moment of kissing, but – he leans in, and presses his mouth to Nursey's.

Nursey kisses back, careful enough that Connor already knows what he's going to say when they lean apart. Even if he hadn't, Nursey's sympathetic, wry smile would tell him. "Sorry," Connor says.

"It's fine," Nursey says, jut gentle enough that Connor doesn't feel patronised, "But I'm sort of involved with someone."

"Dex?" Connor asks before he can think that he shouldn't ask.

"Hell, no. That man is seriously paddling around a river in Egypt."

Connor laughs, a bit from relief and a bit because it's a kind of funny way of phrasing it. He's pleased when Nursey smiles back. "Are you going to tell me who he is?"

Nursey shakes his head. "But if it helps at all, I think he knows a bit how you feel, about the NHL."

"He –" Connor cuts himself off, even though he really, really wants to ask. And only a bit because he wants to put a face to the fantasies he knows that comment is going to trigger.

"What about your friend? The one you were making out with."

"We were just kissing," Connor says, and, "It was just a party hook-up. Like friends with benefits." He's pretty sure, anyway: Chad hooks up with a lot of people, but Connor's never seen him even go on a first date with anyone. 

"You should text him anyway," Nursey says. "Let him know you're okay, I bet he's worried."

It's a brush-off, maybe, or an out if Connor wants to take it, which he finds he kind of does. He wants to be back in their room, where he can breathe in peace for a while, before Tango gets home to flop onto his bed and let Connor talk it all out then give him a hug. "Yeah," he says, instead of telling Nursey that. "I should – thanks for listening to me."

Nursey gives him a bro hug when they're both stood up. "Pretty sure it's part of my duty as half the first line D-pair. You can always call if you need to talk more."

"Maybe when Bitty tracks me down," Connor says, not entirely joking.

"Any time," Nursey says, entirely serious, and Connor would still, if he could, wind the evening back and make it never happen, but he would, at least, be sorry to lose this moment from it.


End file.
